My Paper Weight

During a family visit a few years ago, we went to this little shop called Global Contact in Berry. It is the kind of shop you’d recognise by the smell, which is a blend of sandalwood and patchouli and various incense scents..

You are either a person who loves that kind of shop, or you hate this kind of shop. My Mother is the only person I know who does not love a shop with incense, crystals, jewellery but I assume that there are other people who are not related to me who also may not like this kind of shop. :)

Berry is this quaint little country town with a shopping strip, all different kinds of shops. You can find everything from cuckoo clocks to sausages, from candles to teatowels, from artisan wool to artisan gelato. It is an absolutely delightful place to wander for an afternoon and window shop, but if you have some money to spend it is even more awesome.

For some reason I was drawn to this paperweight. Well, if you know me well enough you’d instantly know why I was drawn to it – because this thing marries two elements I very dearly love. Cobalt blue, and gold. You’ll note the blue is almost exactly the shade of blue which makes up the background of this blog.

It is not actually scratched. I had just cleaned it before I took these photos and I have gone back and double checked it since seeing these photos, and there are no scratches. Weird! But I do think some of the bobbles you can see here are caused by the liquid on the glass wipes I used.

Anyway, while I was cleaning this area I noticed that the top of this cupboard is stained from the whiteboard eraser which has sometimes rested on top of this cupboard. So, I decided to re-do this area and I’ll post about that another day. The photo you see below is after a *lot* of cleaning.

I’ll head over to Berry soon and take some photos and write an actual post, or even a series of them, because Berry is the perfect driving distance from Sydney for a day trip. You can also catch a train there, and the main street is a very walkable distance from the train station. Bring a tote bag in case you shop up a storm, though!

And to end this post on a weird tangent, Berry was the location for Village Vets Australia, which was a fantastic tv show on the Lifestyle Channel on Austar, and if you missed it, the episodes are sometimes on youtube for a couple of weeks, until they are taken down again..

The show was awesome for so many reasons – I learned a lot of new things about cows. They did a rumen contents transplant on a cow which was absolutely fascinating if terrifying for a germophobe. But be aware the show does contain some surgery on animals, and some very sad moments, in among the great moments of which there are also many.

I love those types of shops but can’t stand patchouli, it sets off my asthma and gives me a migraine. so when I go into one of those shops I’ll test the air, so to speak, sometimes the incense is acceptable, sometimes I have to leave.
Love the paperweight.

I will like to mention we visited last week. We had lunch at this fantastic place and I had mushroom bruschetta with brie, ricotta, pesto, and deep fried basil leaves. For dessert I had gelato with cinnamon, one other ingredient I can’t recall, and rhubarb, and banana, salted caramel and coconut.